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8 Ways Brands Use Content Marketing Engagement To Drive Strategy

If you’re a brand manger, part of content strategy, or on a creation team your job is HARD. The fact that content marketing is hot is an understatement. There is lots of research to back that up. Brands need more content but what type of content and, more importantly, what content quality will sustain a conversation around your brand? In our previous post, “What’s Engagement? How Data Driven Marketers are Crushing Content Marketing“, we had over 30 industry leaders provide input on how they are measuring engagement. There is no question that content marketing is now being called the new branding. Marketers are being bombarded with native advertising, real-time marketing, brand stories, content curation, eBooks and now Content Hubs. All being these content strategies are being used to create brand authority to lead generation. But, what are brands doing to harness consumer engagement insights to drive strategy?

See more details on branded Content Hubs for retailers looking for higher engagement.

If you’re team is creating point solution content, you’re missing out on creating sustainable audience engagement. Using marketing insights and data is critical in determining what content is working in your industry. Developing a rigorous engagement performance measurement is required to retain a competitive advantage. The conundrum we see is that most content creation teams suffer from under funding or didn’t get full management buy in. Be upfront with the outcomes you’re looking to achieve with a content marketing investment.

Brands that are not using data-driven marketing are handing over their audience to their competition. Are you educating your customers and providing value through the entire life cycle? Brands are now becoming smarter about leveraging Insights, visual trends and Content Hubs to determine exactly what their audience engages on. This type of data will dramatically change your content marketing strategy. There is real BIG DATA around us in the form of the “content consumption graph” where the audience actions on content speak louder than words. This is truer as you get to a niche industry, where few if any are talking about it. Collectively organizing content engagement and segmenting it provides the content team a way to understand themes, which will improve content relevance and bottom line. Data driven marketing is upon us and those brands that have figured out how to leverage and gain executive approvals are dominating the share of voice in their industry.

There are GREAT tools for managing content workflow like Compendium (acquired by Oracle), Kapost, and DivvyHQ. As the team gets larger, the challenges increase to manage the content creation process. Where brands are falling short beyond slick editorially calendars is understanding what their customers engage with and what to create that’s relevant. Developing content strategy requires looking beyond your own brand and seeing these social connections to your brand and what content is obtaining engagement. There is truly a gold mine in this ever changing data set. And, don’t forget to include a Content Hubs strategy if you looking to be the source of discovery.

The world made up of connections and sharing of content on a massive scale. Brands need to understand how content is the new currency and who is engaging on what.

Prior to creating and making up content you must have a clear understanding of what your industry finds relevant and the types of content that is working. For some industries the amount of competitive content being created is overwhelming and who has time to “monitor all this”? Keyword social listening is an integral part of the equation but brands that have been doing this for 5 years or more know it’s just another tool that requires complex keyword filtration. We are now in the Social Graphs era and must utilize more advanced forward looking techniques to be proactive in our consumer engagement strategy.

The Tsunami of content coming from Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Instagram, Youtube and Pinterest (not to mention the many international platforms) has compounded the problem. You can’t just go to Comscore and Google and review all of your audience insights. People have moved from a keyword world to an interest graph world and the brands have to move too.

For more in-depth insights and useful examples please download our eBook “A Brand Manager’s Guide To Content Marketing In Social Media: 20 Areas of Excellence To Ensure ROI” Get this free 72-page ebook written by Brian Carter and 25 other thought leaders today. Enter your contact info to begin the download.

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